I just accepted a job at a new psych facility, and so far it's pretty awful. Besides the nurses being completely rude and hostile to me all the time, there are some shady things going on with their seclusion and restraint practices.
For one, the documentation is terrible. They just write the total time spent in S/R but don't differentiate between the two. Another thing, is how long they allow patients to stay in seclusion. Average time spent in seclusion at this place is well over 10 hours!
Seems pretty long to me. . . .
The worst thing is that I think they aren't practicing 4 and 5 point correctly. First, I don't even agree with the use of 5 point anymore due to the risk of suffocation. Besides that, there was an incident that, at least to me, was TOTALLY illegal and unethical.
A patient had been in seclusion for over ten hours, just sitting there doing nothing. He got bored, I assumed, and decided to rip the mattress off a wood bed frame. That's when he was placed in 5 point. The thing is though, he wasn't trying to hurt himself with it. He wasn't hurting himself AT ALL, and so it's pretty much that they restrained him to punish him.
When I brought up this concern, I was basically told that I don't have as much experience as my orientation nurse and to mind my own business.
Here is a link (doesn't seem to have been updated recently) that shows deaths of children 18 and younger at various types of psych facilities. Just horrible, makes my chest hurt to read this kind of stuff.
I know we have come a long way in psych tx, but COME ON!!! This is incomprehensible, deplorible, horrific...we have the technology to reach space, to explore the deepest parts of the ocean, we can even clone but the best we can come up with when dealing with someone who has a mental illness when all else seems to fail is to tie them down, sit on them and/or isolate them?! "I don't know what's going on here and I don't know how to fix it so I'll just tie it down, that'll work!" Unbelieveable...and people seem surprised when it doesn't work.
I know why the majority of these tx's and these facilities do not work. Because they are based on profit, and you can't heal someone when the bottom line is what is considered most important. Well, that and how screwed up our society is, but that's a whole other argument.
Pets to People
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Here is a link (doesn't seem to have been updated recently) that shows deaths of children 18 and younger at various types of psych facilities. Just horrible, makes my chest hurt to read this kind of stuff.
http://www.caica.org/RESTRAINTS Death List.htm
I know we have come a long way in psych tx, but COME ON!!! This is incomprehensible, deplorible, horrific...we have the technology to reach space, to explore the deepest parts of the ocean, we can even clone but the best we can come up with when dealing with someone who has a mental illness when all else seems to fail is to tie them down, sit on them and/or isolate them?! "I don't know what's going on here and I don't know how to fix it so I'll just tie it down, that'll work!" Unbelieveable...and people seem surprised when it doesn't work.
I know why the majority of these tx's and these facilities do not work. Because they are based on profit, and you can't heal someone when the bottom line is what is considered most important. Well, that and how screwed up our society is, but that's a whole other argument.